A brief update on Snow Leopard installs here at UKMac.net so far. After complaining about not receiving my pre-ordered Family Pack on Friday the postman arrived Saturday morning with a rather squished jiffy bag all the way from Ireland !
Due to other commitments this weekend I only had time to upgrade my MacBook on Saturday. This went fine, taking less than an hour from start to finish, so this afternoon the first of the to iMacs ( 20″ ) was upgraded and again no issues.
Finally tonight BigMac, my 24″ iMac was lined up for its turn. After running for about half an hour the install failed and I was offered the option to restore from Time Machine backup ! ARGH.
First check was to see if BigMac had actually started to upgrade so I opened Disk Utility which reported the drive correctly and stated that the OS was 10.5.8 so my first thought was that the install had not actually started and that the original OS may still be bootable. After setting the internal drive as the boot disk and rebooting I quickly realised this was NOT the case, the Mac just rebooted and powered off !
I then tried connecting BigMac using target disk mode to my MacBook to see if the drive still had my data on it. Target disk mode failed to work and the iMacs drive did not appear as a volume on the MacBook.
Next I booted back off the Snow Leopard install disk again and this time went into Terminal from the Options menu. A quick directory listing of /Volumes/Bigdisk ( BigMacs internal drive ) showed that all the data was in fact still intact so I decided to err on the side of caution and attach an external firewire drive and make a copy of the data before starting a clean install ( at this point the smart alecs in the audience will be saying, “should have made a bootable copy of system before starting the install”, which is entirely correct, however Bigdisk is 1Tb and I dont have another 1Tb drive to copy to so…. )
So at the moment I am still copying each directory from BigMacs home folder onto firewire disk so I can do a clean install. Before doing the clean install I may try the restore from Time Machine option just out of interest….
@Zerock sent me a tweet earlier this evening to say that he had experienced a similar install failure but he had not as yet attempted to recover the failed machine.
I would be keen to hear from other early adopters of Snow Leopard who have had similar ( or different ) problems with the upgrade this weekend. Drop me a line here or send me a tweet at @UKMac
[...] Original post : Snow Leopard Install Update ( Success and Failure ) [...]
A plea to those attempting the install: BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR DATA!
I just wanted to take the time to say that I feel your pain. Had the exact same problem with my 2.2ghz 15″ MacBook Pro. Ran the installer initially from 10.5.8 with the ignorant assumption that “everything will work fine, just like it has for the past 6 years of using OSX.” Big, big mistake. Should have followed the litany “There are two kinds of computer users: Those who backup and those who lose their data.” Almost died when it told me the node system had been corrupted! I eventually arrived at a similar path to yours, realizing the data was still accessible via terminal and recovered it using a firewire drive.
I’ve since formatted the problematic partition and am now attempting to install SL from scratch… 28 minutes remaining– I’ll let you know how it goes!
Pkloink, yes it is too easy to be lulled into false sense of security and yes I should have known better. To be honest most of my data is in several places anyway so I wasnt too concerned. The only reason I am going through the firewire route is to be sure I havent forgotten anything during my routine backups.
Interested to hear how you get on anyway…
Cheers
So did you get your self sorted with the 24in BigMac in the end?
looking forward to talking to you soon on Mac 20 Questions Podcast.
David Allen´s last blog ..Mac20Q Snow Leopard podcast pt 1
Not yet David, left it copying data late last night. I will do clean install later and recover data from external disks. Should have just done this in the first place, this is what I ALWAYS do !
Scott´s last blog ..Snow Leopard Install Update ( Success and Failure )
For some strange reason it took me two attempts, but the second install went off without a hitch. Copied back all of my data and now things appear to be running smoothly. Performance, as advertised, is notably “snappier” and the more I dig the more I like the new additions. Since I do a lot of web development, it’s nice to see that they’ve finally decided to pre-install the GD library with their PHP distribution. Sleep/awake is also far and away faster.
Based on what I’ve seen so far I’ll recommend 10.6, just be sure to use caution when upgrading!
I installed Snow Leopard on a 20″ iMac and everything seemed to have gone swimmingly. 18 hours later I found the screen saver locked up and thought nothing of it. Rebooted and found a file folder icon with a question mark. Yikes! After 21 years of buying Macs (starting with the Apple IIGS in 1988), this was the biggest disaster ever! Did I back everything up before hand?! Of course not since “it always just worked and there is nothing special about this iMac.”
So I made an appointment at the local Apple store for Friday and started poking around. Disk Utility was no help and so I downloaded Data Rescue II to see if it could do something. It found the disk and is in the middle of checking it. Maybe I won’t go that route if you say that I can get to the disk via the terminal. I do have an external drive that I am running off of now. Hopefully I can copy everything to that tonight when I get home.
Yuck. My faith has been shattered
I land here after googling “MacBookPro Snow Leopard Installation failure”. And it seems we are many. The unfortunaztly ususal) story/ I tried ti install Snow Leopard after receiving the DVD. A hour later, I saw a “installation failed” messsage. Reboot on the DVD, try a second install… same problem. Eject the DVD, try to reboot on my OSX 10.5.8. No way ! Had to re-install the 10.5, then all upgrades. Then I tried to open the finalcutpro project I was on ( I am an editor)… impossible ! I re-inbstall teh all Final Cut Studio 3 suite. And had to move a lot of folder, utilities wasnt here, have to move the folder form my backup disc… Now I amaskinbg ; shall I try to install Snow again. And after seraching an answer on forums and blogs, ir is actually a “NO”. I am also a very old mac user and a bit disapointed,… And no help at all from Apple Care…
remy deveze´s last blog ..Color : des corrections couleurs gratuites
Installed SL [upgrade] just fine on my 15″ Macbook Pro – but I haven’t been able to install xcode or a single update since. I have had an “installation failure” msg for iTunes 9 – xcode 3.2 – aperture 2.1.4 – and mac osx 10.6.1.
Furthermore, my itunes has been hanging constantly.
I guess it’s time to try a clean install, and see what gives.
Funny, because I have Mac OS X 10.6.1 running perfectly on my Dell Inspiron 1525 and I installed (with many hacks) from the retail $29.99 disc purchased at Best Buy.
Everything works great!
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